In this episode, Editorial Intern Ashley Kim from SOLA Network sat down with Hadassah Betapudi and Elijah Kim, Stanford students and co-founders of Esslo. Launched in 2024, Esslo utilizes AI to close gaps in the college admission process. Hadassah and Elijah discuss their journey from being students to bringing Esslo to life. They emphasize the tool’s role in enhancing human interaction and personalized feedback, as well as the importance of stewarding academic gifts to serve others.
Esslo has been featured in Christianity Today.
Ashley Kim: Okay, hello. This is Ashley for SOLA Network. Today, I have the privilege of speaking to Hadassah and Elijah, two Stanford students who founded Esslo, an AI program that offers feedback to college application essays. Really impressive work, but also so cool that they’re Christians, and here even met in a Bible study on their college campus. So so glad that you two are both here, and really thankful that we get a bit of your time. Hadassah and Elijah, could you tell us a little bit more about slo and the story behind it? Could you also tell us a little bit about yourselves?
Hadassah Betapudi: Sure, maybe I’ll just start by talking about myself. Yeah, my name is Hadassah. I graduated from Stanford in 2022 with a bachelor’s in political science, and then 2023 with a master’s in epidemiology, and was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, but education has always been really near and dear to my heart. Neither of my parents attended college in this country, and all for my grandparents were educators, and so I think I’m someone who used education as this really powerful tool to help empower people and to help us decide our future. And so it’s been a privilege, as he said, To co found Esslo alongside Elijah and to work with so many really brilliant and wonderful students who have a really great life ahead of them.
Elijah Kim: I can share a little bit about myself. I’m Elijah. I’m currently a master’s student here at Stanford. I did my undergrad in electrical engineering, and right now doing a master’s in computer science. And yeah, similar to Hadassah, education is always something that I’ve cared and thought a lot about. I grew up with the unconventional education background and was was mostly self taught up until, up until college and and so when applying to college, came out things with just yeah, that it being a very, very unfamiliar system and and it being a real challenge to figure out, figure out what the application process looked like and how to best navigate it. And, and, yeah, and so Hadassah, and I met through, through Chi Alpha, a Christian fellowship here on campus. And then later, when we’re both interested in, in building and building things. We were both interested in education, and so we started looking around in the space, talking to a lot of students, teachers and and college application essays consistently came up as a pain point. And so that’s what, that’s what started our journey into, into what became Esslo.
Ashley Kim: Thank you so much for sharing. I think it is so cool that in building something like SLO, it’s not only like a feat of ingenuity, but you can also really see an impact as you see people using it, as you get feedback from students who’ve been really helped. Yeah, just really curious. What has it been like to go the whole process of creating it and launching it and seeing what reception has been like?
Hadassah Betapudi: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I first met Elijah, as he mentioned, it was just through the context of a Christian Fellowship, and then later, we led a Bible study together for an entire year, and by the end of it, we both knew each other well and trusted the other person, and we both were interested in startups in the startup space, and decided to go in and try to create one together. And I think the expectation for most people who are starting new companies, and who like us, had no previous experience in doing so, is that you will fail, and you might fail miserably. I think the stat is something like 19 out of 20 startups fail, and the vast majority still fail within the first year of being founded.
And so I think it’s been super gratifying and surprising and overwhelming to see that slow has thrived and far beyond what I had envisioned when we were first starting. As Elijah mentioned, we did a lot of interviews with students and teachers and parents, asking them, what’s the hardest part about applying to college and to us, it became super clear, after doing a lot of these that everyone was saying essays. Essays are super hard. There’s too many of them. They’re too complicated. Students don’t feel empowered when they write them. They don’t feel like they know how to write about themselves, that they know how to write well. And that’s when Elijah and I really started experimenting with different tools and technologies and prompt engineering and but even when school. Had kind of solidified Esslo as a tool. We still had no idea what public reception would be until we launched in July of 2024, and then since then, I’m happy to report, we have 14,000 users who have created accounts on the platform and have used it to get feedback on I think it’s 30,000 or more essays, and those users are from 150 countries. So like, genuinely, like, people are using it all across the globe. And those are just like big raw numbers.
The more like gratifying and sweet part of my job is that I get to field a lot of emails from students who are asking questions or who are thanking us, and it’s so cool like to genuinely see like, oh so and so is from Ulaanbaatar, and they did not have a teacher who felt who spoke English really well and was able to give them feedback on essays that are going to American colleges, and so they found Esslo, and slo was affordable for them, and they were using it. They were like, This is so great. We got DMS like that to our Instagram. And I think most recently, we talked to a student who got a full ride at U Chicago, and he was one of our free users. We had given him, like, full access to Esso for free. And I mean, he got onto his number one choice. He’s a questbridge student, and had ranked at number one. And so he was like, thank you so much. Like, Essel helped me into my dream school. And like, that’s really the best part about the job.
Ashley Kim: Thank you. That’s awesome. I’m so glad to hear how it’s just been met with success, and not just in being embraced by others, but in really seeing it help them and help others and yeah, one of the things that’s really striking to me about this is that so is not only a startup and not only a very successful one, but one that benefits people other than yourselves. How does your faith interact with technology and tools like AI?
Elijah Kim: Yeah, that’s something that was really important to us from from the get go and in whatever we were building, and just felt like we had, we had been made stewards of a lot in terms of just having a lot of a lot of really incredible opportunity, being here at Stanford and and then also saw just a really big delta, and one the level of of support that people had in in applying to college, for example. And then also a big delta and and the way that people had had access to technology, combined with how, how people were able to use technology.
So for example, among our friends here, I mean, yeah, I can’t think of a single friend to have an engineering who doesn’t, doesn’t use AI tools in their daily workflow to to some, to some kind of capacity. And meanwhile, I would talk to other people who had, yeah, we’re talking about chat GPT as something that they had. They had, you know, just heard about in the news and, and, and we realized that there were, there were so many students that that either weren’t aware of these tools or were just using them in a like, let me try to have chat GPT write my essays kind of way. And, and for us, it was, yeah, yeah. It was so clear what a big difference there was between people who, yeah, who had, who were proximate to these kinds of technologies and guidance and and were aware of how to use these tools in much and much more advanced ways. And so that was something that, that was when we realized we could, we could help a lot of people and in a in a very accessible and scalable way. And so that’s when we started putting together what, what became Esslo and and making sure that, yeah, that as much as possible, every every student can have access to really high quality guidance when, when it comes to applying to college. And, yeah, have really quality guidance and and we just wanted to be able to share the the resources that that we were given, and make sure that that lots of other people could could have access to them as well.
Ashley Kim: So full cards on the table. I’ve written about chat GPT for sola before, and I tend to be a skeptic. Maybe it’s just the humanities major in me, but I don’t love the way that generative AI can degrade the human ability to think and create. And I know Esslo is not generative. It’s not writing original essays for its users. But what would you say to someone like me who tends to be suspicious of AI?
Elijah Kim: Yeah, to to that, I think with, as with any technology, it’s it’s a tool, and so you know, you can use it both in good ways and and in and in harmful ways. And so I think the difference here is it’s a tool that’s that’s really powerful, that has come onto the scene super, super quickly. And so it’s, yeah, people are still figuring out how to how to use it in the most effective ways, but, but for example, with Esslo we put a lot of time and care into, into making sure that one it was not not writing the essays at all for the student, but that it was really helping them in the same way that a good college counselor would, and giving them feedback and suggestions and guidance and really helping the student tell, tell their story and say, Hey, you talked a little bit about this, but we think there’s so much more there. Can you give more details or share more about how it impacted you or impacted the people around you, and and, and so we wanted to, yeah, make sure that it was, it was not taking away from that, that human and individual component, but really just coaching people and how to bring that out more and so in building Esslo we were working with a lot of different college counselors, sharing it with them and and making sure that that both the the feedback was was helping bring that out in students, and then also making sure that it was really high quality feedback in our minds, it was yeah, it was net negative to put out, to put out misleading or unhelpful feedback out into the world. And so that was yeah, that was a priority from from day one.
And so when it comes to the the AI skeptic, yeah, what I would have to say is, is to, is to look at how, yeah, how can it be used to to accentuate the the human parts, the creative aspects of of your workflow, and so that’s either by taking care of the really boring, mundane tasks, or it’s in the in the coaching and the brainstorming. So for example, there was a study that looked at two different groups of people. One group of people, it was just a human brainstorming session, and another group, it was humans brainstorming plus some AI AI tools that would like add extra suggestions into the pot, they found that that group ended up generating way more ideas and more creative ideas. And so, yeah, so I think we should, we should approach things with skepticism and and make sure that, yeah, that we’re that we’re evaluating the both the pros and the cons, but, but what I’ve seen is that is that when you try AI, is it’s just a super powerful tool and and really augmenting the our our human skills and unique stories?
Hadassah Betapudi: Yeah, I would, I think I completely agree with everything all I just said, and I just want to add, you know, if I’m thinking about things from a global perspective, generally speaking, Ashley, like I would agree with the skeptic, and I think humans are much more of helping students write their essays and review their essays and create a narrative. But you know, the actual reality that we’re dealing with is that there’s a huge teacher shortage, and not just that, but students who are in big public schools, or pretty much any school that’s not like a really small private school, just don’t have that kind of access to a college counselor who’s able to give them really robust feedback. And then on top of that, there’s a, you know, huge swath of students who are applying to college as first generation students, or people like me who parents were educated, but in a different country. And again, just like lack the insights that an adult who is a native English speaker and familiar with the college application process would be able to provide to those essays. And you know, for me as a mere mortal who only has a few resources at her disposal, of course, I would love to meet all 14,000 students and hear their stories and individually, help each one of them write their essays, but I can’t. But, you know, God has given me this really great gift and active grace of meeting Elijah and being at Stanford.
And so I feel like my charge is, then to say, you know, with the tools at my disposal and with the technology that I can help develop, how can I help as many students as possible? And I can’t just duplicate myself 14,000 times, the realistic solution was SLO. And so, you know, to me, I really see slo and my role in it as a sort of ministry helping other students and making education accessible to them when, like I, an individual, am severely limited in my ability to do so just by myself.
Elijah Kim: And what we found is that with with SLO, people end up being able to get a lot more personalized human help. So for example, there’s a lot of college counselors that use slo and and they’re in that position where they would love to be able to sit down with each student for for an afternoon, but they’re, you know, they have perhaps 100 seniors that they need to help that year, and unfortunately, just don’t have the time. And so they’re able to use Esslo to to get 85% of the way there in just a couple minutes. As far as giving the student that, that kind of basic feedback, that that you know, student after student needs to hear similar things and and then really focus their attention on, how can I then go the extra mile and giving the student feedback based off of, you know, what I know about them, or what I heard about them from other teachers at the school, or what I know about their family. And so we found that it’s really helped help students get, get more human and individualized feedback. And then for students using Esslo they often also find it really helpful as as a springboard to then to then ask, ask as for more feedback from from their friends and from their parents and from the teachers. Because they’re, they’re given all these other thoughts by Esslo these other thoughts and ideas, and then they’re able to to go, Oh, these are, these are some examples of of how I can, I can take things further and share, share more about myself. And so it’s a much easier springboard for them to be able to to ask the people around them who know them well, of Oh, which, which direction do you feel like best, best reflect who I am?
Ashley Kim: Yeah, thank you. That’s so helpful. I love hearing about how Esslo is just being approached by you and by others who use it as a tool that actually enhances that human interaction and the relationship between a counselor and a student who’s applying. And I’m so encouraged by that, so encouraged to see how you two are using your gifts in that way to help students. A considerable part of SOLA’s audience comes from Asian American church leaders and pastors and so a lot of people who are listening are more involved in a church context, rather than, say, working directly with students in an academic context. So this may not be directly under your purview, but I would just love to pick your brain on like, how you see technology changing the way that the church operates.
Elijah Kim: I think fundamentally, the the churches, the the churches, is about the about sharing, sharing God’s love with each other, and sharing that with by bringing a new people into the community and sharing God’s love with people who already know and love Jesus and and so the the heart of the heart of that, I think, really is, is discipleship and people, people mentoring one another, caring for each other in very, very deep and personal ways. And so I, I don’t see technology as something that that fundamentally changes that but, but what I do see is it, it changes the the spaces in which that takes place and and then also, in some ways, is just a really helpful tool in aid and in some of the other just kind of logistics or processes that that have to happen in order to, yeah, to run some of these events or programs. So I’ll yeah, I’ll give some quick examples, like, for example, like, technology, I think, makes it a lot easier for people to to connect and remain close to each other when they’re physically far apart. And so, for example, like, there’s the there’s good friends that some are on the other end of the world, that that I still keep in touch with regularly, and we yeah, we share about our lives, and we pray for each other. And that’s that’s, of course, all enabled by technology. And then I think other key things is technology and just accelerate just the same way that any other organization would, just accelerates some of the processes, the administration and logistics that are required to Yeah, to to contact all the all the people in the youth ministry and coordinate schedule so that they could find a time to meet. So honestly, I feel like where technology is the most helpful is, is the kind of boring stuff so that you can really focus on. That that personal aspect and that discipleship, which, in my mind is, is at the heart of what, what a church is for.
Hadassah Betapudi: Yeah, I think, for me not to sound cliche, but I think as Christians, we’re called to be in the world, but not of it. And I think, as Elijah said, as well. Technology, at the end of the day, is just a tool, and it can be used for great good and great evil as well. And so the relevant question is, with the technology that we have access to, how are we choosing to use it? How am I choosing to use it? And I really like what you said, Ashley, about approaching it from a skeptics lens and keeping your eyes wide open, but also not letting that initial novelty or fear of the unknown keeping you from, yeah, not using it in technology in ways that can really benefit a lot of people.
Ashley Kim: That’s so helpful. Thank you. I love hearing from people who are kind of like across the academic divide, as someone who comes from a very different discipline, love hearing about it as looking at all the different possibilities and the ways that technology can actually enhance and kind of smooth and facilitate discipleship within the church, rather than hindering that. So that’s so encouraging for me, if I can ask one more question, and if you don’t mind if I go a little bit off script, I love the story about Esslo and how this is something that came out of your work as students, and within the context of being students at Stanford. I’m wondering if you could speak to any students out there who also have different fields that they’re interested in and would love to do something in, especially students who are Christian. How can they think about stewarding their gifts, and specifically the academic gifts that the Lord has given them in order to help and serve others?
Hadassah Betapudi: Yeah, that’s a such a good question. I think it’s a really relevant one for me as well. Who has studied like very different disciplines, obviously, political science is in the social sciences. My master’s is in epidemiology, which is very statistical. And yeah, statistics, but adjacent to biology. And then, actually, not many people know this, but I actually went to medical school and then dropped out to start Esslo and so I can very much relate to these broader questions of how does what I choose to study affect what I do later in life? And how should those dreams for the future determine what I study now? And the broader Christian questions of, how can I use what I’ve studied to glorify God? And you know, I know for myself as someone who has studied a lot of different things and often had that internal struggle and debate. I think something really important I learned along the way is that, like, if you have a good desire to help someone like God is the author of all good things. And for me, like good advice I heard was, you know, to trust that God has a plan and His ways are higher than yours, and things that might initially seem like failures or bumps along the way, or when your path is not what you have written. I mean, that’s because a great, loving God, who is the ultimate author, has written your story as well. And so really I would, I would recommend that students embrace the uncertainty and praise God for all of it, the good and the bad. Because oftentimes, like in my own case, good could be right around the corner, but it’s hard to see when you’re struggling with a B or a C or something.
Elijah Kim: Yeah, the some thoughts that come to mind are from kind of an additional angle of in particular for students in in college, I think we have a really, a really unique and awesome opportunity to serve God in that we’re, we’re in a spot that’s that’s drawing people from, in some cases, students from literally all around the world. And so, like in the New Testament, where, where did they plant churches? First they went to the cities, and the ones that were, that were the most, most international and the most hubs of of culture and influence and and college is a space where you have, you have that same attracting people from all over the country or all over the world. And then also it’s a case where people get to see you, not just, not just in a church context, not just in a work context, but in in all of life. You’re you’re with the same people. You’re eating with them in the dining halls, you’re seeing them in the dorms. You’re doing projects and in trips with people and and so I think it’s. Just such a, such a powerful and unique opportunity to to be a walking advertisement for what it looks like to live as someone who has received the love of Jesus and be able to share that with other people. And so I think, How can, yeah, how can students use, use their gifts to to serve God, I think. And, yeah, in things as simple as the way that you you pray with and for people in your dorm, the way that that people see you working diligently in your classes and treating, treating the people in the in the group project with with a lot of a lot of excellence and care and love and the way that people seeing you, being being a leader, and really seeing needs and addressing them in the community, I think you can, yeah, yeah. I’m Yeah, hard pressed to think of a of a better way to showcase God’s love, and as Yeah, and as as regular and concrete a way as that.Ashley Kim: Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. That’s so helpful. That’s also so helpful personally, for me as a student, but I’m sure for many of our viewers too. So thank you so much. Thank you both for your time and for coming to talk about this really exciting project. I wish you all the best with Esslo and with what’s next for both of you. So, thank you.
Photo Credit: SOLA Network